Chapter 126

Tap. Clack.

Footsteps rang sharply over the glossy floor, their cadence a little too quick. Seoul was leaving the official quarters.

—”I’ll do as you said.”

—”On one condition.”

—”We trade right now.”

He would turn himself in—but only if the exchange happened immediately. That was Noh Pil-gyu’s ultimatum.

It was deep into the night, but knowing the designated meeting place lay inside the headquarters complex gave Seoul some relief. He had never ventured beyond the main building and residential quarters, however, and had to stop several times to check his route. Fifteen minutes later, he reached the farthest edge of the sprawling compound.

He was grateful for the heavy layers he had pulled on. Every gust tugged at the front of his jacket and carried the faint mineral smell of concrete dust, while the artificial shrubs along the perimeter wall stood as black silhouettes in the dark.

Whoosh.

The nondescript building was completely dark. Unlike the main complex, where security lighting remained on around the clock, this structure seemed unnaturally dead. Seoul looked up once before bracing himself against the heavy steel door.

“……”

The iron handle was icy against his palm. He hesitated for a breath, then leaned his weight into the door.

Screeech.

The hinges gave a rusty groan that seemed out of place in a government complex. Seoul glanced overhead and moved cautiously inside. The cavernous interior looked abandoned halfway through construction: no tile, no finished walls, only raw concrete rasping beneath his soles. Compared with the polished exterior, it felt like a ruin, lit only by the dim green glow of an emergency exit sign.

—”Come up to the 5th floor.”

That had been Noh Pil-gyu’s final message. Following the green emergency signs, Seoul climbed the concrete stairs, each footfall echoing hollowly through the unfinished stairwell.

He swallowed against a dry throat. Wandering alone through an unfamiliar ruin in the middle of the night to meet Noh Pil-gyu was absurd on its face. Still, there was no avoiding it.

Creeeeak—.

The fifth-floor door was far heavier than the one below. Seoul had to brace an elbow against the dense metal slab and force it open. Only when it gave halfway did he understand why: there was no corridor beyond it, only open air.

A bare tree and a lone wooden bench occupied the rooftop. Urn-shaped ventilation shafts and tall utility housings broke up the open expanse, but not a single machine hummed. The whole place felt abandoned. Seoul straightened against the wind and silently thanked himself for dressing warmly.

Finding Noh Pil-gyu among the scattered utility structures took no effort. He sat on a bench at the far edge of the roof, hands buried in his pockets, smoking. His white dress shirt was rumpled and his jacket was nowhere in sight. At the groan of the door, he turned.

“With this many buildings, I didn’t think you’d find your way.”

“…Yes. Many of them look identical.”

The older man’s face betrayed little—detachment, perhaps, or simple resignation. He crushed the cigarette beneath his shoe and stood. Rather than approach Seoul, however, he walked to the parapet and rested his forearms on the railing.

“The rest are decoys—empty scarecrows. Decent shells on the outside, completely hollow within. Here, there, everywhere—all the same.”

Seoul had never spoken with Noh Pil-gyu like this before. Nearly every previous encounter had found the man boiling with rage. After a brief hesitation, Seoul moved closer.

No sign of life came from the neighboring buildings either. Accent lights traced their outer walls, but against the brilliant blaze of the main building in the distance, the empty shells looked even more desolate.

“I always intended to transition into politics. This post was merely a stepping stone.”

Seoul turned from the view. There was no remorse in Noh Pil-gyu’s voice. A man capable of remorse would never have climbed this far toward the edge in the first place.

“Still, after resolving to turn myself in and turning it over in my mind, there was one nagging thorn I simply couldn’t overlook.”

Seoul straightened, every sense tightening. He had not lowered his guard for a second since leaving the quarters, and he had no intention of doing so now.

Standing beside him with both hands thrust into his pockets, Noh Pil-gyu was no longer gazing outward.

“Why did you go out of your way to pull that ledger out and show it to me?”

“That is…”

Before Seoul could finish, Noh Pil-gyu cut him off.

“Knowing full well that if I discovered where it was, I’d inevitably try to snatch it. Isn’t that right?”

Whoosh.

Wind lashed loose strands of hair across their foreheads. Noh Pil-gyu gave Seoul a crooked smile.

“Little brat. The scent of honey wafting off you is far too sweet.”

Seoul locked his knees. For a moment, it felt as though the blood had drained from his body, but he could not let that show. His expression remained composed.

“I already told you: it was out of gratitude.”

Tap, tap.

Who would believe that? Noh Pil-gyu tapped the toe of his dress shoe twice against the concrete, the deliberate rhythm disappearing into the wind.

“Even knowing it’s a snare, what choice do I have? I hold no other moves on the board.”

Clack.

Muttering to himself, Noh Pil-gyu shoved his hands deeper into his pockets and turned fully toward Seoul.

“You said you opened the ledger, right?”

“Yes.”

“Read it all? Must have been boring as hell with nothing but numbers.”

“I didn’t inspect it expecting entertainment.”

It was meaningless chatter before the real bargain began. Seoul’s heart struck so hard against his ribs that his fingertips had gone numb, yet he did not so much as twitch.

“Ah-ha.”

Noh Pil-gyu’s narrow eyes sharpened. His mouth pulled into a crooked sneer.

“You haven’t opened it yet, have you?”

“……”

A suffocating silence settled between them, filled only by the wind. Seoul held Noh Pil-gyu’s gaze, his tongue dry against the roof of his mouth.

‘There are even photos in there of you drinking stripped naked.’ Lee Ho-hoon had once said as much to Noh Pil-gyu. A man who had spent years distributing bribes while maintaining a meticulous ledger would hardly have neglected to preserve compromising photographs of the entertainment that accompanied them.

Age had dragged at the corners of Noh Pil-gyu’s mouth, and smiling did not come naturally to him. Still, those heavy lips curled upward now. Testing the nerve of a twenty-year-old novice was child’s play.

Step.

Noh Pil-gyu took a pace toward Seoul.

“There are plenty of fascinating photographs in there. Didn’t know that, did you?”

Seoul’s eyes flickered behind his lenses. Noh Pil-gyu had correctly seen through the lie about opening the ledger. Which meant his offer to surrender had never been sincere.

“…Whether I opened the ledger or not changes nothing. The contents remain what they are.”

Seoul retreated by the same distance Noh Pil-gyu advanced. The man chuckled at the audacity and nodded.

“True enough. Whether you truly intended to repay a favor or concocted a lousy excuse makes no difference to me.”

Noh Pil-gyu kept talking as he stepped forward again, forcing Seoul back with him.

“Because it all falls into the palm of my hand anyway.”

The waist-high parapet met Seoul’s back.

“I’ll just kill you that much faster.”

The taunt sent gooseflesh racing beneath Seoul’s heavy coat, his spine going rigid. Before either of them could speak again—

Click.

Click. Metal locked into place nearby—the unmistakable sound of a firearm being readied. Seoul turned toward it.

A figure shifted out of the dark. The cold mechanical click was one Seoul knew too well: a gun being aimed. He froze.

“Old man’s temper is as hasty as ever. I told you to keep your mouth shut until I showed up.”

Gwak Chun-young stood there.

“……”

His hair had grown noticeably longer since Seoul last saw him. One hand rested deep in the pocket of a worn, oversized jumper; the other held a pistol, its black muzzle trained squarely on Seoul.

“…Gwak Chun-young.”

“Look at the age gap between us. How insolent to just spit out all three syllables of my name.”

Seoul went still. Behind his glasses, his eyes stopped wandering and fixed squarely on Gwak Chun-young.

“What’s with that look? You knew I was coming. Is that the best feigned shock you can muster?”

Both Noh Pil-gyu and Gwak Chun-young had known tonight’s exchange was a trap. Sweat gathered in Seoul’s palms. Resisting the urge to reach for the back of his neck, he answered carefully.

“…What do you mean?”

“You didn’t honestly believe I waltzed into this completely blind, did you?”

With the wind at his back, Gwak Chun-young looked badly swollen, his face and body puffed from whatever he had endured while in hiding. Seoul stared at him in silence and fought to steady the violent pounding of his heart.

If both men had knowingly walked into a trap, then what had they calculated beforehand? That was the dangerous unknown. Noh Pil-gyu claimed he had no move left, but there was no chance he had come here empty-handed.

Do-hyeop had said he would move the instant Gwak Chun-young entered Seoul. Yet Gwak was already here, waiting at the rendezvous as though he had staged his entrance on purpose. The Do-hyeop Seoul knew would never simply lose a moving target—unless Gwak Chun-young had been inside the compound all along.

“Ah. Wondering what Gye Do-hyeop, who’s lying in wait to bag me, is up to right now? That’s what you’re curious about, isn’t it?”

Gwak Chun-young chuckled as though sharing a particularly amusing piece of gossip.

Whoooosh—.

The predawn wind was not especially strong, yet it scraped across Seoul’s cheeks like a thin blade. He kept his mouth shut. Anything he said could become leverage, something Gwak Chun-young might turn against Do-hyeop. A chill seeped through his body as sweat soaked beneath his clothes, and fear for Do-hyeop’s safety prickled sharply along his nape.

As if he had read every unspoken thought, Gwak Chun-young grinned with almost childish delight. He pulled a palm-sized monitor from his pocket, flipped it open, and tossed it onto the ground without ever taking his finger from the trigger.

Clatter.

“Here. Look. Doing just fine, isn’t he?”

The screen showed a high-angle feed from inside a vehicle. Seoul recognized the interior from the banquet he had once attended with Do-hyeop: a mobile command center lined with seats and monitors. Do-hyeop was sitting inside it now.

“……”

Onscreen, Do-hyeop held a black plastic cigarette between his lips, looking supremely bored. Pale vapor drifted from his mouth and disappeared into the vents of a compact air circulator.

“Did you think you were the only ones who knew how to dig a pit?”

Only then did Seoul realize how long it had been since he had seen Do-hyeop smoke. Even the bitter trace of cigarettes had vanished from his scent, leaving only the natural fragrance Seoul loved. The realization struck with such tenderness that his chest ached.

Do-hyeop could spit the most abrasive words imaginable and still be gentle in ways so small they were easy to miss. Watching him through the monitor, Seoul felt affection twist painfully together with dread. If Gwak Chun-young could see inside that vehicle, then—

“Do you think a camera was the only thing I planted in there?”

Snap.

Seoul’s gaze tore away from the monitor and snapped upward.

Even battered and swollen, Gwak Chun-young looked breathlessly exhilarated. His bright eyes bored into Seoul from only an arm’s length away, as though he had been waiting for precisely this reaction.

“I brought this especially for you. Because I wanted to give you a little present.”

He reached into the deep pocket of his jumper and drew out a handheld plastic cylinder with a black switch set into one end. At the same time, the pistol in his other hand dipped toward the floor. The implication was immediate.

“……”

One press of that switch could tear the command vehicle apart. Seoul’s hands curled into fists. His heart hammered wildly, yet his veins seemed to constrict around the blood rushing through them. A hot pulse of pain throbbed at the base of his skull.

“Don’t you dare lay a finger on the Deputy Director.”

“Oh-ho.”

“…I have it. The ledger. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”

Gwak answered Seoul’s firm declaration with a mocking snort.

“Coming all the way out here, taking back what’s mine is an absolute given, of course—”

Gwak Chun-young did not look troubled in the slightest.